UNM Kiva Club Sponsors Event to Remember Larry Casuse

The University of New Mexico Kiva Club sponsors the Larry Casuse Memorial Event 35th Anniversary, Sunday, March 30. The event begins in the University of New Mexico Student Union Building Ballrooms B & C with guest speakers at 5 p.m., followed by a 7:30 p.m. sunset vigil, and culminating with a reception at 8 p.m.

While a student at UNM, Casuse protested the appointment to the UNM Board of Regents of Gallup's mayor, Frankie Garcia, who owned Gallup area bars. Casuse believed Garcia was involved in a conflict of interest that led to exploitation and death of local native people. Following a series of protests that failed to prevent the mayor’s appointment to the Board of Regents, on Friday, March 1, 1973, in an effort to bring attention to the situation, Larry Casuse and Robert Nakaidinae kidnapped Garcia. In the aftermath, Casuse, then a 19-year-old UNM sophomore, was shot and killed.

The 5 p.m. guest speakers are Bob Nakaidinae, Marley Shebala and John Redhouse. They will share their personal remembrances of the event. “The Indian movement was then born…It was born because we must once again regain the balance of good and evil,” Casuse, a former Kiva Club president, said in a 1973 speech.

Kiva Club was founded at UNM in 1952. The organization raises campus and community awareness of native issues. For more information, call the Kiva Club at 277-7236, or email kiva@unm.edu.

Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu